Syracuse's mission to pown the Atlantic-10 clashes with Rhode Island's quest to pown the Big East tomorrow when the two teams meet at the Carrier Dome. The Orange have already beaten St. Joe's and Fordham and would have had a third win in the conference if not UMAss' inability to lay down for us. The 9-1 Rams have wins over South Florida and Providence, whom they beat on Tuesday. Their lone defeat was at Boston College and it wasn't by much. So who are these Rams? Forward Will Daniels leads the team in scoring (18.1) and blocks (1.7) and also contributes a healthy 7 rebounds per game. While his stats (9.4 PPG, 5.9 APG) might not reflect it, guard Parfait Bitee shares the leadership role with Daniels, while also having one of the best names in the country. ("You know
what else everybody likes? Parfaits. Have you ever met a person, you say, "Let's get some parfait," they say, "No, I don't like no parfait"? Parfaits are delicious.") Both team captains set the balance for this "team of spurts" and provide it with the leadership that has made them successful so far this season.The Rams are coming off a 19-14 season in which they made it to the A-10 championship game but lost to George Washington 78-69.
For Syracuse, its a chance to continue showing off this fancy new, what do you call it, defense? After limiting Tulane to 60 points, they held Virginia to 15 points under their season average. Rhode Island is averaging 80.4 points per game which should be manageable if the Orange can maintain their recent defensive play and continue their strong offensive output.
Said output is still led by Donte Greene, averaging 19 PPG, and Erid Devendorf, averaging 17. Paul Harris has become Mr. Intangible for the Orange, averaging 12 PPG, 11 RPG, 3 APG and 2 SPG. Jonny Flynn and Arinze Onuaku ain't doing too shabby either, both averaging double-digits in the points.
Learning my lesson from the Virginia game, I'll happily suggest the Orange will win, with a prediction of an extremely hard-fought 87-86 win. But as we all know, the day will soon be here when computers control everything and we're all just batteries powering their megacities. Until that say comes, we must rely on computers to do the next best thing...predict shit. Unfortunately for us, the computers do not have high hopes for the Orange against Rhode Island. In fact, the computers think our entire season is about to bottom out.
Honestly, computers are dicks.
And yes, that is the first and last time I quote Shrek. Mostly because that's the only funny line from any of the movies.
(AP Photo/Stew Milne)